Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Will climate chaos reign in the Anthropocene?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Will climate chaos reign in the Anthropocene?

Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism.

Naturalists had of course been aware since the mid-19th century that glaciers had at least once advanced to cover much of the world with ice, and that animals now unknown once walked the earth, but changes of that magnitude were believed to occur extremely slowly, and to be of no relevance to human history and activity. Like the painted backdrop in a stage play, the natural world was unchanging context, not an active player in any human drama.

That view is no longer tenable. Scientific research now shows that the Earth is constantly changing on every scale of space and time, and that the most drastic changes often occur with remarkable speed.